Nick Lane > Quotes

“One begins to wonder if all the most interesting problems in physics are now in biology.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

“Nothing is more conservative than a bacterium.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“Radical feminists and evolutionists agree that males are a serious cost to society.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life

“If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer, it just seems longer.’1”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“Petty human squabbles over borders and oil and creed vanish in the knowledge that this living marble surrounded by infinite emptiness is our shared home, and more, a home we share with, and owe to, the most wonderful inventions of life.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“I shall argue that the distinction between a ‘living planet’ – one that is geologically active – and a living cell is only a matter of definition. There is no hard and fast dividing line. Geochemistry gives rise seamlessly to biochemistry. From this point of view, the fact that we can’t distinguish between geology and biology in these old rocks is fitting. Here is a living planet giving rise to life, and the two can’t be separated without splitting a continuum. Move”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?

“At the level of their biochemistry, the barrier between bacteria and complex cells barely exists.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life

“Without programmed cell death, the bonds that bind cells in complex multicellular organisms might never have evolved.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life

“Thermodynamics is one of those words best avoided in a book with any pretence to be popular, but it is more engaging if seen for what it is: the science of 'desire'. The existence of atoms and molecules is dominated by 'attractions', 'repulsions', 'wants' and 'discharges', to the point that it becomes virtually impossible to write about chemistry without giving in to some sort of randy anthromorphism. Molecules 'want' to lose or gain electrons; attract opposite charges; repulse similar charges; or cohabit with molecules of similar character. A chemical reaction happens spontaneously if all the molecular partners desire to participate; or they can be pressed to react unwillingly through greater force. And of course some molecules really want to react but find it hard to overcome their innate shyness. A little gentle flirtation might prompt a massive release of lust, a discharge of pure energy. But perhaps I should stop there.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“There’s no greater insult in science than to say that an argument is ‘not even wrong’, that it is invulnerable to disproof.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?

“Your 40 trillion cells contain at least a quadrillion mitochondria, with a combined convoluted surface area of about 14,000 square metres; about four football fields.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?

“We should not be too quick to dismiss our own [ocular] arrangement. As so often in biology, the situation is more complex.....we have the advantage that our own light-sensitive cells are embedded directly in their support cells (the retinal pigment epithelium) with an excellent blood supply immediately underneath. Such an arrangement supports the continuous turnover of photosensitive pigments. The human retina consumes even more oxygen than the brain, per gram, making it the most energetic organ in the body.”
― nick lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“If all these considerations are correct, then the appearance of eyes really could have ignited the Cambrian explosion. And if that’s the case, then the evolution of the eye must certainly number among the most dramatic and important events in the whole history of life on earth.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“To visualize this dance, the transparent components of the cell had to be coloured using a stain. As it happened, the stains that were best able to colour the chromosomes were acidic. Unfortunately, these stains tended to dissolve the mitochondria; their obsession with the nucleus meant that cytologists were simply dissolving the evidence. Other stains were ambivalent, colouring mitochondria only transiently, for the mitochondria themselves rendered the stain colourless. Their rather ghostly appearance and disappearance was scarcely conducive to firm belief. Finally Carl Benda demonstrated, in 1897, that mitochondria do have a corporeal existence in cells. He defined them as ‘granules, rods, or filaments in the cytoplasm of nearly all cells … which are destroyed by acids or fat solvents.’ His term, mitochondria (pronounced ‘my-toe-con-dree-uh’), was derived from the Greek mitos, meaning thread, and chondrin, meaning small grain. Although his name alone stood the test of time, it was then but one among many. Mitochondria have revelled in more than thirty magnificently obscure names, including chondriosomes, chromidia, chondriokonts, eclectosomes, histomeres, microsomes, plastosomes, polioplasma, and vibrioden.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life

“Life itself turned our planet blue and green, as tiny photosynthetic bacteria cleansed the oceans of air and sea, and filled them with oxygen. Powered by this new and potent source of energy, life erupted. Flowers bloom and beckon, intricate corals hide darting gold fish, vast monsters lurk in black depths, trees reach for the sky, animals buzz and lumber and see. And in the midst of it all, we are moved by the untold mysteries of this creation, we cosmic assemblies of molecules that feel and think and marvel and wonder at how we came to be here.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“It seems that all eukaryotic cells either have, or once had (and then lost) mitochondria. In other words, possession of mitochondria is a sine qua non of the eukaryotic condition”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life

“Men are even worse: a hundred rounds of cell division are needed to make sperm, with each round linked inexorably to more mutations. Because sperm production goes on throughout life, round after round of cell division, the older the man, the worse it gets. As the geneticist James Crow put it, the greatest mutational health hazard in the population is fertile old men.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“The myosin in our own skeletal muscles is more closely related to the myosin driving the flight muscles of that irritating housefly buzzing around your head than it is to the myosin in the muscles of your own sphincters”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“To doubt that life evolved, even if some of the details described in this book may yet prove wrong, is to doubt the convergence of evidence, from molecules to men, from bacteria to planetary systems. It is to doubt the evidence of biology, and its concordance with physics and chemistry, geology and astronomy. It is to doubt the veracity of experiment and observation, to doubt the testing in reality. It is, in the end, to doubt reality.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“Well, biology is not only about genes and environment, but also cells and the constraints of their physical structure, which we shall see have little to do with either genes or environment directly. The predictions that arise from these disparate world views are strikingly different.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?

“This was difficult to prove as most hydrogenosomes have lost their entire genome, but it is now established with some certainty.1 In other words, whatever bacteria entered into a symbiotic relationship in the first eukaryotic cell, its descendents numbered among them both mitochondria and hydrogenosomes.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life

“Pigments such as haemoglobin are coloured because they absorb light of particular colours (bands of light, as in a rainbow) and reflect back light of other colours. The pattern of light absorbed by a compound is known as its absorption spectrum. When binding oxygen, haemoglobin absorbs light in the blue-green and yellow parts of the spectrum, but reflects back red light, and this is the reason why we perceive arterial blood as a vivid red colour. The absorption spectrum changes when oxygen dissociates from haemoglobin in venous blood. Deoxyhaemoglobin absorbs light across the green part of the spectrum, and reflects back red and blue light. This gives venous blood its purple colour.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life

“The point I want to make about methanogens is that they were the losers in the race through a bottleneck, yet nonetheless survived in niche environments. Similarly, on a larger scale, it is rare for the loser to disappear completely, or for the latecomers never to gain at least a precarious foothold. The fact that flight had already evolved among birds did not preclude its later evolution in bats, which became the most numerous mammalian species. The evolution of plants did not lead to the disappearance of algae, or indeed the evolution of vascular plants to the disappearance of mosses.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life

“But whatever our beliefs, this richness of understanding should be a cause for marvel and celebration.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“In an average person, ATP is produced at a rate of 9 × 1020 molecules per second, which equates to a turnover rate (the rate at which it is produced and consumed) of about 65 kg every day.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life

“Life is the interplay between structure and energy.”
― Nick Lane, Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death

“Occam’s razor, the philosophical basis of all science: assume the simplest natural cause. That answer might turn out not to be correct, but we should not resort to more complex reasoning unless it is shown to be necessary.”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?

“All life on our planet is related, and the readout of letters in DNA shows exactly how. By comparing DNA sequences, we can compute statistically how closely related we are to anything, from monkeys to marsupials, to reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, crustaceans, worms, plants, protozoa, bacteria–you name it.”
― Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution

“Matters came to a head after 1918, when the French scientist Paul Portier published his rhetorical masterpiece Les Symbiotes. He was nothing if not bold, claiming that: ‘All living beings, all animals from Amoeba to Man, all plants from Cryptogams to Dicotyledons are constituted by an association, the emboîtement of two different beings. Each living cell contains in its protoplasm formations, which histologists designate by the name of mitochondria. These organelles are, for me, nothing other than symbiotic bacteria, which I call symbiotes.”
― Nick Lane, Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life

“We have established on thermodynamic grounds that to make a cell from scratch requires a continuous flow of reactive carbon and chemical energy across rudimentary catalysts in a constrained through-flow system. Only hydrothermal vents provide the requisite conditions, and only a subset of vents – alkaline hydrothermal vents – match all the conditions needed. But alkaline vents come with both a serious problem and a beautiful answer to the problem. The serious problem is that these vents are rich in hydrogen gas, but hydrogen will not react with CO2 to form organics. The beautiful answer is that the physical structure of alkaline vents – natural proton gradients across thin semiconducting walls – will (theoretically) drive the formation of organics. And then concentrate them. To my mind, at least, all this makes a great deal of sense. Add to this the fact that all life on earth uses (still uses!) proton gradients across membranes to drive both carbon and energy metabolism, and I’m tempted to cry, with the physicist John Archibald Wheeler, ‘Oh, how could it have been otherwise! How could we all have been so blind for so long!’ Let”
― Nick Lane, The Vital Question: Why is life the way it is?